NewSchools Venture Fund is a national nonprofit venture philanthropy working to reimagine public education.

NewSchools Venture Fund was created in 1998 by social entrepreneur Kim Smith and venture capitalists John Doerr and Brook Byers, each of whom had witnessed the power visionary entrepreneurs held to create dramatic change in other sectors, such as technology.

NewSchools’ founders believed that education entrepreneurs could similarly bring about much-needed change in public education if they had access to both early-stage capital and strategic, hands-on support to start and grow their organizations. We built NewSchools Venture Fund to enable a new type of capital market that could support the development of entrepreneurial ventures serving high-need students within public education.

In our first 18 years, we invested nearly $260 million in nearly 200 education entrepreneurs. Among their many accomplishments, they started nearly 470 schools with the potential to serve more than 200,000 students around the country and created education technologies reaching more than 60 million students and their teachers worldwide. Throughout our history, we have invested in three key areas: schools, tools and people. The investment focus in each area has evolved over time to address emerging needs and opportunities.